Acorn

Issue date: 2/8/08 Section: Arts and Leisure

Media Credit: new-pony.com Bob Dylan waves to his fans during his Rolling Thunder Revue tour, which lasted from fall of 1975 to spring of 1976.

Attempting to synthesize the musical transformations within Bob Dylan's career as America's prodigal songwriter into one cohesive story would be a daunting task even for the most well-versed music biographer. Attempting to create that story and make it true is impossible. Because complicating factors in Dylan's story are apparent, I am not going to attempt to tell it. Rather I will define a brief but immensely important era of Dylan's career within the construct of the long tradition of American roots music.

Dylan embarked on a tour in 1975 that presented a brand-new setting and sound for the music he spent his life creating. The Rolling Thunder Revue lasted from the fall of 1975 to the spring of 1976, but it marked a new side of Dylan and it breathed new life into the songs that he often saw as growing stagnant with age. Furthermore, the tour gave life to the growing folk-rock and country-rock genres Dylan himself was at the forefront of, recording "Highway 61 Revisited" and touring with The Band. When the tour began in 1975, it saw Dylan employing a handful of notable musicians including Roger McGuinn and Joan Baez to travel with the tour. Throughout, musicians would come and go, as the tour traveled through the Northeast.

The rotating cast and the spontaneity of the ensemble and presentation of the tour harkened back to a distinct time of American history when traveling medicine shows and carnivals would roll into towns in the early 20th century. Giving credence to the tour's presentation of a traveling sideshow was Dylan's use of whiteface. He would walk out on stage wearing white face paint and dressed as a gypsy traveler, weary and entering town for only a few hours to entertain.

The songs in Dylan's catalog received drastic changes, where the previously acoustic folk songs of his repertoire such as "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" and "It Ain't Me Babe" were given fast and bluesy rock and roll treatments.

Ending in less than a year and only a memory next to the many faces of Dylan since the one covered in white paint, the tour made a mark on the American music scene. Contemporary acts such as the rock band Wilco have taken much of their style from the presentation of music found during this period of Dylan's career.

The Rolling Thunder Revue was free form and there was a highly remarkable aspect within the music that Dylan's own compositions were being transformed into these songs that bore small resemblance to how he originally conceived them.

It was as if the songs were written specifically for the tour and had never meant to be anything but a testament to the enduring spirit of the American roots of rock and roll in the music of every performer that made a life out of paying tribute to them.

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